


tether

by 1001cranes



Series: Nemo - Phoenix Fields [8]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Brothers, Gen, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, every last one of em, gods are bitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 22:28:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15129113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001cranes/pseuds/1001cranes
Summary: Nemo shows up at Linus's cabin unannounced, just before nightfall.





	tether

**Author's Note:**

> something, um, not that chill happened last night dot gif
> 
> there is a (good? bad?) timeline where Nemo Scanlan'd out and went to live with Linus for a while.

Nemo shows up at Linus's cabin unannounced, just before nightfall. He doesn't try to be quiet as he approaches and by the time Nemo gets to the front door Linus is already leaning against the door jamb, lantern in one hand. Crossbow tucked just inside the door.

"Hello stranger," Linus says. Even in the dim light Nemo looks ill, or exhausted, or both. He looks as if he hasn't slept for days.

"Can I stay?" Nemo asks once he wakes up the next morning. The hollows under his eyes have brightened some, but he still looks sick. He has the look of a man down on his luck - beaten, bruised. Like he’d taken a gamble and lost. Linus has seen that look a lot in his line of work. "For a little while?”

"As long as you like," Linus says, and scruffs Nemo’s hair the way he did when they were kids.

Nemo ducks his head a little, but he doesn’t complain.

  
| |

  
A while is a day. A week. Then a month.

Nemo gets better, then worse, then better and worse again, over and over. If he sleeps he wakes up refreshed, at least a little; the sunken hollows of his eyes fill in, or the sallow color of his skin turns pink. But sooner or later he's ill again -- sooner or later he's tired and slow and sad, and Linus tells him to get back to bed. Nemo rarely argues.

A curse, Linus thinks at first. It’s not that he doesn’t know about curses -- he’s been on the receiving end of them a few times himself - but they usually fade quickly, and almost always once you’re away from whatever cast it. Or its _very_ bad, and you need a relatively powerful cleric.

One of his friends was a cleric. Either she’s not his friend anymore, or she’s just - not.

Linus wants to ask about it -- wants to ask about everything, really -- but he doesn’t know how. They've never been great at talking about things. They never had to be. There wasn't much call for it growing up. Their lives were so similar, the differences so small and inconsequential that they were well-known and well-loved quirks -- Nemo's affection for books, Linus's uncannily sharp eyes. That mother loved Nemo best but Linus never cared because he did as well -- that Nemo was always his favorite and he was always Nemo’s. There was a time Linus knew Nemo as well as he knew himself. And that Nemo is gone. Linus knows that. He _accepts_ that. Nemo is a man grown. A different man that the child that Linus knew. And Linus knows, too, that Nemo is still mostly here, sitting beside him. Linus didn't really lose him, as he once feared.

Still. The silence is hard to break.

| |

Some days Nemo feels well enough to head to the library, the way he used to. A few weeks in Linus starts to head out on jobs again -- smaller things, short trips, then trickier and trickier, with bigger payoffs. He doesn’t ask Nemo to join.

Sometimes Linus catches Nemo worrying at the rings on his fingers. There’s a cheap gold one with a little chip of a ruby, barely big enough to fit on his pinkie, and then a magic one so nicely made even Linus can tell it must have cost a coin purse of gold. Nemo tilts his head to the side, occasionally, as if someone who isn’t there is talking to him. Linus can't say that doesn't worry him - not when he already lost his brother once - but he knows what Sending or a Message looks like, and he can’t stop someone from trying to contact Nemo, he’s pretty sure.

“Who is it,” he asks, finally. “Who you keep talking to.”

Nemo puts down his book. “Rowan, mostly,” he says after a moment. “Usually Rowan, when she gets the chance.”

“But not always.”

“Not always.” Nemo hesitates for a moment. “It’s not -- talking, exactly, but. Sometimes it’s Lysander.”

“The boyfriend.”

“Yeah.” Nemo’s quiet for a minute. “I guess.”

"You _guess_?” Linus can feel his ire rising, swift as a flood after the spring rains. Why does he brother have the shittiest taste in men? “Did he do something to you?"

That gets him a hoarse chuckle. “Not like that, no.” He pauses. “We were attacked in our keep, in Soraya. In the middle of the night. It was - it was going fine, until it didn’t, and -- I was disintegrated.”

Disintegrated. The word doesn’t even make sense for a second. _Disintegrated?_

“I died,” Nemo continues. “Worse than died, because -- Rowan can fix death pretty easily these days. When there’s a body."

"And there was no body." Something about Linus’s face feels strangely numb. That this happened - that this happened so soon after Linus thought Nemo was safe again --  

"Just dust,” Nemo said. “I don't -- I don't remember it, really. Anyway. Lysander helped bring me back, but there was a cost. He's with the Raven Queen now. Not dead, but -- not here. Not anywhere I can touch him." He was worrying at the ring again, the magic one. “But I can help him. I can give him my strength, when he needs it."

Linus hisses through his teeth. "At the expense of your own?"

Nemo shrugs. “Just means I need more sleep. That I'm tired. He's fighting for a _god_ , Linus, and if I can do anything to help bring him back to me--"  Nemo turns to look Linus full in the face for the first time in a long time eyes wide. It’s a good day, mostly; there’s hardly a shadow under them. “Anything I can do for him I will.”

His sensitive, stupid baby brother, Linus seethes. Always willing to be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. An unfortunate family trait.

“Can I do anything?” is what he says, instead of the half dozen other protests that spring to his lips. “Can I help?”

Nemo smiles and bumps his shoulder against Linus's. "What do you think you've been doing? Why do you think I came here?"

Linus shakes his head. “Anything you need from me. It’s yours.”

“I remember _that_ ,” Nemo says softly, and Linus swallows, hard. 

“Go back to your damned book,” he says, and Nemo hums in agreement.

This Lysander better damn well be worth it.


End file.
